We Seek You
Jeremiah 29:13
Earlier, I was sitting and listening to some music. One of the songs wasn't in English. The words translated to this:
“We don't listen to anyone,
We don't think of anyone
We only have one life,
We don't listen to anyone,
We don't believe anyone anymore
We take tomorrow for granted.”
These phrases got me thinking about this blog entry I had on my agenda to get written, as this does seem to accurately reflect the mentality that has been adopted by much of society.
Since this is mainly a blog site about my music, I guess music is a good place to start. Even though I have written a lot of music, I listen to a lot of other people's music as well. I amassed lot of my song library from scrounged vinyls. I do not have subscriptions to any of the latest subscription song services. I never listen to the radio. Even though iTunes is defunct, I still use the app on my laptop. I have a plethora of songs I have gathered over the years, and they play randomly. Services like Freegal find me adding more songs all the time.
When I am seeking music I want to own and listen to, I typically find myself looking to discover musicians in out-of-the-box and peculiar places. My choices are peculiar, too. Many of the singers I gravitate to are not in this country. Some of their songs aren’t in English, either. I like a wide variety, in contrast to the 4 singers singing 5 songs that America crams down everyone's throats. The best songs and the best singers are almost never heard by the masses. To find good music, one has to seek it out. "They" aren’t going to bring it to you.
When we want to really know Jesus, it is pretty much the same thing. We have to think outside the proverbial box, and we have to be willing to go on a hunt to find Him in peculiar ways and places. If we want to know every bit of Jesus we can get, we can’t sit and wait for Him to come and expect Him to download everything there is to know about Him into our minds. There is a massive amount of seeking that we need to invest into finding Him. If we put in the effort, He meets us.
Verses that popped in my head when I thought about this song were in Matthew 25. I was thinking about passage where Jesus is talking about the final judgment and the separating of the sheep and the goats. In verse 35-40, Jesus says: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ When He was addressing the righteous (sheep), they asked questions like, “When did we feed you Lord?”, and “When did we visit you in prison?,” and so on. And Jesus responds, “When You did this to the least of the poor, hungry, imprisoned, etc, you did it for me.” In verse 41-46 He then addresses the unrighteous (goats) who were had the same opportunities they were given and He said, “Depart from me… For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, for I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” And they are suddenly flabbergasted and asked when they were astonished that they had missed some opportunities they clearly had missed.
Jesus was saying this future occurrence was referring to our life time on Earth and the chances we have to live out and prove our relationship with Him and His importance to us is more than a fire insurance policy. One of the ways to deepen our connection with Jesus is listening to Him and talking to Him. Another is the way we treat and serve those that cross our paths every single day. What places does our mind go to every day? What opportunities do we see? What opportunities to we miss or ignore? The deeper we seek a relationship with Jesus, the more our serving opportunities increase. We find the tendencies that become ingrained in us just happen naturally. They become second nature without us saying, “Gee, I hope Jesus saw what I just did for _______.” Seeking to know Jesus isn’t just a daily Bible reading time or a prayer every. Many of the opportunities He sends to us are an inconvenience, time consuming, and sometimes difficult.
